They caught a red-eye flight back to New York City that same night.

The cabin was dead quiet, heavy with exhaustion. Samuel sat beside Julian with his eyes closed, leaning back against the seat. He seemed slightly drunk. A faint flush colored his cheeks, and his breathing was rougher than usual. His tie remained tightly fastened around his neck, making him look visibly uncomfortable, yet he never loosened it. Maybe he was simply used to this kind of relentless, high-pressure life.

At some point, Julian fell asleep too.

He only woke when someone lightly tapped his elbow. Groggy, he opened his eyes and realized the plane had already landed.

Afterward, he and Samuel took separate cabs home.

By the time Julian reached his apartment, it was already three in the morning. After hesitating for a while, he politely sent a message:

Boss, did you make it home safely?

No reply came.

Julian took his pajamas into the bathroom. Twenty minutes later, after showering and blow-drying his hair, Samuel still hadn't answered.

Julian set his phone aside and climbed into bed, curling himself beneath the cold blankets.

Back in New York City, work quickly consumed him again.

Samuel spent very little time at the office these days. Sometimes an entire week passed without them seeing each other more than once or twice, and the fragile closeness they'd built during the business trip gradually faded back into distance.

A week later, the IPO contract for Synapse AI was officially signed.

Then Julian received notice that he would be responsible for project coordination and overall progress management.

Project coordination…?

Julian had absolutely no experience with that role. When he saw the message, his mind went blank.

"Don't panic." Asher patted him on the shoulder, his lake-green eyes calm and reassuring. "Your job's actually pretty simple. You keep everyone synced up. If someone falls behind, you push them. If they run into problems, you solve them. And if you can't solve them, you come to me or Samuel."

"But I've only been rotating through departments for like… two months," Julian said hesitantly. "What happens to the project if I get reassigned later?"

Asher seemed caught off guard by that question.

After a brief silence, he finally said, "This was Samuel's decision. If you don't want the role, talk to him before the meeting."

Julian hesitated for a long moment before walking toward Samuel's office.

The door was open.

Samuel stood by the window with his back to the room, talking on the phone. He didn't notice Julian enter.

Summoning his courage, Julian knocked softly. After receiving permission, he stepped inside.

More than a minute passed before Samuel finally ended the call and looked up.

"Something wrong?"

The words Julian had rehearsed instantly disappeared the second those eyes landed on him.

Julian had never been a confident person.

For most of his life, he'd gone unnoticed.

Back in elementary and middle school, his parents worked out of town and barely paid attention to his grades. It wasn't until he got into one of the city's top high schools that they realized their son was actually academically gifted.

But that was all.

When Julian got accepted into Boston University, his parents proudly bragged about him to relatives and neighbors, yet they still never truly praised him.

Whenever someone complimented his grades, his parents would laugh awkwardly and say:

"Yeah, his grades are good, but he's way too shy. More timid than a girl. Relatives come over and he can't even greet them properly. Honestly, your son's much better. He's already helping with the family business at such a young age…"

Getting into Boston University had given Julian confidence—for a little while.

But the moment school started, that confidence shattered.

There were too many extraordinary people around him.

Academic prodigies who'd won national competitions their entire lives. Brilliant artists. Star athletes.

They shone so brightly they looked untouchable.

Compared to them, Julian felt like nothing more than a hardworking kid from a small town.

The only thing he'd ever truly been proud of was his grades.

And once even that stopped making him special, he disappeared into the crowd again.

He was incredibly grateful to receive an offer from Apex Capital, and he genuinely admired the full-time employees who got to work on major projects.

Truthfully, when he thought about it carefully, he didn't actually dislike this assignment.

He was just afraid he'd fail.

More than refusing the job, what he really wanted was for someone to believe in him. Someone to push him forward when he hesitated and say:

You can do this.

Julian pressed his lips together before speaking softly.

"Samuel… Asher said you were the one who assigned me to coordinate the Synapse AI IPO."

Samuel was still busy. He'd already returned to reading documents after the call, barely lifting his eyes.

"I did."

Julian paused before asking quietly, "Can I ask why?"

Samuel replied without looking up, "Will the reason affect your attitude toward the job?"

"No." Julian shook his head immediately. After hesitating for two seconds, he added softly, "I just… don't think I'm the right fit."

"You don't want it?" Samuel asked.

"It's not that I don't want it, it's just—"

"Then do it."

Samuel finally looked up from his work.

His deep eyes settled directly on Julian.

"You're not some brand-new intern anymore. You've been at Apex for two months already, and you've worked on an IPO before. Your abilities aren't any worse than the full-time staff."

Julian looked up in shock.

His heartbeat suddenly skipped.

Was Samuel… encouraging him?

"I…" He opened his mouth, trying to speak.

"I'm not forcing you to take the position," Samuel continued evenly. "But if you can't handle it, reassign the role."

Julian froze.

The joy he'd felt only seconds earlier crashed straight into panic.

Replace him…?

No.

He couldn't lose this job.

Anxiety surged through him again, and with it came a familiar, shameful impulse.

The urge to wear women's clothes.

When Julian was little, his family had been poor. Before elementary school, he mostly wore his older cousin's hand-me-downs, which naturally included dresses.

Nobody in the countryside thought much of it. Lots of kids wore old clothes to save money.

His parents worked incredibly hard, and Julian had always been obedient. He'd never once asked for new clothes.

Until one day he went to school wearing a dress.

The boys in his class yanked on his skirt and laughed at him for "not having a dick."

That was when Julian realized something for the first time:

Normal boys didn't wear dresses.

That afternoon, he went home and quietly said he didn't want to wear dresses anymore.

"But dresses are so pretty," his family told him. "Our Julian looks even prettier than girls when he wears one."

"Mom and Dad work so hard to raise you. Julian's such a good boy. You're not gonna compare yourself to other kids over clothes, right?"

"Okay!" the child nodded obediently, not understanding anything.

Wear dresses, get praised.

Wear dresses, make your family happy.

Without realizing it, Julian slowly formed that simple belief.

He stopped caring how the other boys treated him anyway. He didn't even want to play with those loud, sweaty boys.

That continued all through kindergarten.

Until elementary school.

One day, a group of boys chased him out of the boys' bathroom and locked him inside the girls' bathroom instead, laughing and telling him to go play with the girls.

Furious, Julian got into a fight.

The school called his family.

And only then did they finally stop making him wear dresses.

That was when Julian truly understood:

Boys wearing dresses wasn't normal.

His family hadn't praised him because he looked pretty.

They'd done it because they didn't want to spend money buying him clothes.

After that, Julian never wore a dress again.

In fact, he grew to hate anything associated with dresses.

Until he started interning at Apex Capital.

The pressure became so overwhelming that the desperate desire for approval began surfacing again…

"Julian."

A low voice suddenly cut through his thoughts.

Julian snapped out of the memory and met Samuel's dark, unreadable eyes.

"Do I make you nervous?"

Julian looked at him, but he couldn't read a single emotion on Samuel's face.

That suffocating feeling returned instantly.

Like being trapped in a humid room without air conditioning in the middle of summer. His skin felt damp and sticky, prickling all over, as though countless ants were crawling across him.

Julian was under enormous pressure.

But he didn't dare admit it.

He couldn't lose this job.

And after all these years, he'd already gotten used to swallowing every ounce of stress alone.

"No." Julian shook his head, accidentally biting down on his lip.

White teeth sank into soft flesh, adding a strangely intimate kind of sensuality to his otherwise innocent face.

Samuel's gaze lingered briefly on the bite mark before shifting away.

"If you're not nervous," he said calmly, "then stop biting your lip in front of me."

Julian froze.

He'd been biting his lip again?

He immediately let go, heat exploding across his cheeks.

It was an old habit.

Back when he transferred from the village elementary school to the town school at age nine, he'd fallen behind academically. The village curriculum simply wasn't as advanced.

But he was pretty.

And because he was pretty, teachers loved calling on him in class.

Whenever he couldn't answer a question, he'd stand there blushing furiously while the boys around him snickered and laughed.

At the time, Julian didn't fully understand what those reactions meant, but his body instinctively recoiled from them.

He'd look pleadingly at the teacher, hoping to be spared.

Instead, the teacher seemed to enjoy the atmosphere even more and would keep asking him questions.

Julian still couldn't answer.

So he'd bite his lip harder and harder from nerves.

The laughter would only grow louder.

One embarrassed student could instantly energize an entire classroom, and the teacher clearly found that entertaining.

It gradually became a ritual.

Whenever the class got sleepy or rowdy, the teacher would call on Julian just to watch the pretty boy blush in front of everyone again.

Julian couldn't resist.

He couldn't even say no.

All he could do was helplessly bite his lip.

Thankfully, it didn't last forever.

Within a month, he could answer every question fluently. By the end of the semester, he was scoring perfect marks in every subject—even English, which he'd never studied before.

The teacher stopped targeting him as often.

And little by little, Julian stopped hurting his lips.

Until one Spring Festival, when his father came home from work and decided to test his studies.

Julian got nervous again.

And unconsciously bit his lip.

Smack—

A pair of chopsticks slammed hard against his head.

Pain exploded through his skull.

His whole body trembled as he instinctively bit his lip even harder.

"What's with biting your mouth like that? You look pathetic. Not like a man at all." His father's face darkened with disgust. "Don't bite your lips. And don't cry either. You hear me? You cry once, I hit you again."

Julian desperately held back his tears.

But they kept falling anyway.

He got beaten badly that night.

And from then on, he finally forced himself to break the habit of biting his lips whenever he was nervous.

The lesson had been unforgettable.

It had been years since he'd slipped back into that behavior.

But maybe he was too tense right now.

Maybe that was why he'd unconsciously done it again.

"I'm sorry." Julian lowered his head in panic, apologizing almost desperately. "It won't happen again."

"I wasn't criticizing you."

Samuel had somehow crossed the room without Julian noticing.

Now he stood directly in front of him.

"Julian," he said quietly, "you don't have to apologize to me."

"I'm sorry." Julian lowered his head even further.

Guilt swallowed him whole.

For a moment, it felt as though everything he'd worked so hard for had disappeared in an instant.

He'd thought he'd already come so far.

Thought he'd finally become someone better.

But now it felt like he'd been dragged all the way back to that tiny rural town again.

No matter how hard he tried, he could never truly escape it.

Something invisible wrapped around his body, suffocating him, trapping him in place.

"Julian. Relax."

A low, steady voice drifted down beside him.

The next second, warmth brushed against his chin.

Julian looked up blankly.

Samuel was holding his jaw gently, his thumb brushing slowly across Julian's lower lip with surprising patience and care.

"Stop biting your lip. You’re making it bleed."